Thu Jan 25 10:03:55 GMT 2018

MoneyLab is a network of artists, activists, and geeks experimenting
with forms of financial democratization. Entering the 10^th year of the
global financial crisis, it still remains a difficult yet crucial task
to distinguish old wine from its fancy new bottles. Founded in 2013, the
MoneyLab network questions persistent beliefs, from Calvinist austerity,
growth, and up-scaling, to trustless, automated decision making and
(anarcho-)capitalist dreams of cybercurrencies and blockchained solutionism.

We consider experiments with digital coops, internet-based payment and
network-based revenue models as spaces of political imagination, with an
equally important aesthetic program. In this second MoneyLab Reader the
network delves into topics like the financialization of art; love as a
binary proposition on the blockchain; the crowdfunding of livelihood;
the cashless society; financial surveillance of the poor; universal
basic income as the real McCoy or a real sham; the cooperative answer to
Airbnb and Uber; the history of your financial dashboard; and,
Hollywood’s narration of the financial crisis. Fintech rushes through
our veins, causing a whirlwind of critical concepts, ideas and
imaginaries. Welcome to the eye of the storm.